Source: Global Research
Syria is winning. Despite ongoing bloodshed and serious economic pressure, Syria is advancing steadily towards a military and strategic victory that will transform the Middle East. There is clear evidence that Washington’s plans – whether for ‘regime change’, for rendering the state dysfunctional or for dismembering the country on sectarian lines – have failed.

That failure will fatally wound the US dream, announced a decade ago by Bush junior, for a subservient ‘New Middle East’. Syria’s victory is a combination of coherent popular support for the national army, in face of a vicious sectarian Islamists (takfiris), firm backing by key allies, and fragmentation of the international forces lined up against them.

The economic hardships, including regular blackouts, are now worse but have not broken the Syrian people’s will to resist. The government ensures basic foods are affordable and maintains education, health, sports, cultural and other services. A string of formerly hostile states and UN agencies are resuming their relations with Syria. An improved security situation, the recent big power agreement with Iran and other favourable diplomatic moves are all signs that the Axis of Resistance has strengthened.

You wouldn’t know much of this by reading the western media, which has lied persistently about the character of the conflict and developments in the crisis. Key features of that deception have been to hide NATO’s backing for the takfiri groups, yet trumpet their advances and ignore the Syrian Army roll-backs. In fact, these western-backed terrorists have made no real strategic advance since a flood of foreign fighters helped them take parts of northern Aleppo, back in mid-2012.

In my second visit to Syria during the crisis, in July 2015, I could see how security had improved around the major cities. In my first visit in December 2013, although NATO’s throat-cutters had been ejected from much of Homs and Qsayr, they were in the ancient village of Maloula and along the Qalamoun Mountains, as well as attacking the road south to Sweida. This year we were able to travel freely by road from Sweida to Damascus to Homs to Latakia, with just one minor detour around Harasta. In late 2013 there was daily mortaring of eastern Damascus; this year it was far less common. The army seems to control 90% of the heavily populated areas.

Fact check one: there never were any ‘moderate rebels’. A genuine political reform movement was displaced by a Saudi-backed Islamist insurrection, through March-April 2011. In the first few months of the crisis, from Daraa to Homs, key armed groups like the Farouq brigade were extremists backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who practised public atrocities and blew up hospitals, using genocidal slogans and practising sectarian ethnic cleansing (1). Syrians these days call them all ‘Daesh’ (ISIL) or just ‘mercenaries’, not bothering too much with the different brand names. The recent statement by ‘moderate rebel’ leader Lamia Nahas that Syria’s ‘minorities are evil and must be disposed of’, just as Hitler and the Ottomans disposed of minorities (2), only underlines that fact. The character of the armed conflict has always been between a confrontation between an authoritarian but pluralist and socially inclusive state, and Saudi-style sectarian Islamists, acting as proxy armies for the big powers.

Fact check two: almost all the atrocities blamed on the Syrian Army have been committed by western-backed gangs, as part of their strategy to attract deeper western intervention. That includes the discredited chemical weapons claims (3) and the collateral damage claims of the so-called ‘barrel bombing’. US journalist Nir Rosen wrote back in 2012, ‘Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation … Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters but … described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces’ (4). Those opposition reports are still relied on by partisan groups such as Amnesty International (US) and Human Rights Watch, to bolster the war propaganda. The Syrian Army has indeed executed captured terrorists, and the secret police continue to detain and mistreat those suspected of collaborating with those terrorists. But this is an army which enjoys very strong public support. The Islamist gangs, on the other hand, openly boast of their atrocities and have minimal public support.

Fact check three: while there is a terrorist ‘presence’ in large parts of Syria, neither Daesh/ISIL nor any other armed group ‘controls’ much of the populated Syrian territory. Western agencies (such as Janes and ISW) regularly confuse presence with control. Notwithstanding the Daesh/ISIL offensives in Daraa, Idlib and Eastern Homs, the heavily populated areas of Syria are under noticeably stronger army control than they were in 2013. Only a few areas have been held for months or years. In any sustained confrontation, the Army generally wins; but it is under pressure and not infrequently makes a tactical retreat, because it is fighting on dozens of fronts.

The Syrian Army has tightened its cordon around northern Aleppo, Douma and Harasta, and has had recent victories in Hasaka, Idlib and Daraa. With Hezbollah forces the Army has virtually eliminated Daesh/ISIL and its squabbling partners from the Qalamoun mountains, along the border with Lebanon.

Despite years of mass terrorism and western sanctions the Syrian state is functioning surprisingly well. In July 2015 our group visited large sports centres, schools and hospitals. Millions of Syrian children attend school and hundreds of thousands still study in mostly fee-free universities. Unemployment, shortages and power blackouts plague the country. Takfiri groups have targeted hospitals for demolition since 2011. They also regularly attack power plants, leading to government rationing of electricity, until the system is back up. There are serious shortages and widespread poverty but, despite the war, everyday life goes on.

For example, there was controversy in 2014 over building the ‘Uptown’ complex in New Sham, a large satellite city outside Damascus. The facility comprises restaurants, shops, sports facilities and, at the centre, children’s rides and other entertainment. ‘How could the state spend so much money on this, when so many people were suffering from the war?’ one side of the argument ran. On the other side it was said that life goes on and families have to live their lives. After Ramadan, during Eid, we saw thousands of families making use of this very child-friendly complex.

Security procedures have become ‘normal’. Frequent army checkpoints are met with remarkable patience. Syrians know they are for their security, especially against the car and truck bombs used by the Islamists. Soldiers are efficient but human, often exchanging friendly chat with the people. Most families have members in the Army and many have lost loved ones. Syrians do not endure curfews or cower from soldiers, as so many did under the US-backed fascist dictatorships of Chile and El Salvador, in the past.

In the north, the Mayor of Latakia told us that this province of 1.3 million now has over three million, having absorbed displaced people from Aleppo, Idlib and other northern areas affected by incursions of sectarian terrorists. Most are in free or subsidised government housing, with family and friends, renting or in small businesses. We saw one group of about 5,000, many from Hama, at Latakia’s large sports complex. In the south, Sweida has been hosting 130,000 displaced families from the Daraa area, doubling the population of that province. Yet Damascus holds the greater part of the six million internally displaced people and, with a little help from the UNHCR, the government and army are the main ones organising their care. The western media only tells you about the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, facilities mostly controlled by the armed groups.

The ‘regime attacking civilians’ or ‘indiscriminately’ bombing civilian areas only has a basis in the Islamist propaganda on which much of the western media relies. The fact that, after three years, Syrian planes and artillery have not flattened hold-out areas like Jobar, Douma and parts of northern Aleppo, gives the lie to claims against the Army. You can be almost certain that the next time western media say ‘civilians’ are being killed by ‘indiscriminate’ Syrian government bombing, it is the Islamist sources themselves who are under attack.

This war is being fought on the ground, building to building, with many army casualties. Many Syrians we spoke to said they wished the government would indeed flatten these ghost towns, saying that the only civilians left there are the families of and collaborators with the extremist groups. The Syrian Government proceeds with greater caution.

Regional states see what is coming, and have begun to rebuild ties with Syria. Washington still pushes its chemical weapons lies (in face of the independent evidence), but lost its stomach for any major escalation back in late 2013, after the confrontation with Russia. There is still much sabre rattling (5), but it is noteworthy that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), enemies of Syria just a little while back, are now normalising their diplomatic relations with Damascus.

The UAE, perhaps the most ‘flexible’ of the Gulf monarchies, but also linked by Vice President Joe Biden to support for Daesh/ISIL (6), has its own worries. It recently arrested dozens of Islamists over a plot to turn the absolutist monarchy into an absolutist caliphate (7). Egypt, back in military hands after a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood Government that wanted to join in the attacks on Syria, is now dealing with its own sectarian terrorism, from that same Brotherhood. The largest of Arab countries now defends the territorial integrity of Syria and backs (at least verbally) the Syrian campaigns against terrorism. Egyptian analyst Hassan Abou Taleb calls this message ‘a condemnation and rejection of Turkey’s unilateral moves’ against Syria (8).

The Erdogan Government tried to position Turkey at the head of a Muslim Brotherhood region, but has lost allies, is often at odds with its anti-Syrian partners and faces dissent at home. Washington has tried to use the separatist Kurds against both Baghdad and Damascus, while Turkey sees them as key enemies and the Saudi-backed Islamists slaughter them as ‘apostate’ Muslims. For their part, the Kurdish communities have enjoyed greater autonomy and acceptance under Iran and Syria.

Washington’s recent agreement with Iran is an important development, as the Islamic Republic remains the most important regional ally of secular Syria and a firm opponent of Saudi-style Islamists. Affirmation of Iran’s role in the region upsets the Saudis and Israel, but bodes well for Syria. All commentators see a diplomatic jockeying for position after the Iran deal and – despite Iran’s recent exclusion from a meeting between Russian, US and Saudi foreign ministers – there can be little doubt that Iran’s hand has been strengthened in regional affairs. An unusual meeting between Syria’s intelligence chief, Brigadier-General Ali Mamlouk, and the Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (9), also shows that the Syrian Government has resumed direct discussions with the major sponsor of terrorism in the region.

Syria is winning because the Syrian people have backed their army against sectarian provocations, mostly fighting their own battles against NATO and Gulf Monarchy sponsored multi-national terrorism. Syrians, including most devout Sunni Muslims, will never accept that head-chopping, vicious and sectarian perversion of Islam promoted by the Gulf monarchies.

Syria’s victory will have wider implications. It spells an end to Washington’s roller coaster of ‘regime change’ across the region, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya. Out of the death and misery caused by this dirty war we are seeing the emergence of a stronger ‘Axis of Resistance’. Syria’s victory will also be that of Iran and of the Lebanese Resistance, led by Hezbollah. Further, the conflict has helped built significant measures of cooperation with Iraq. The gradual incorporation of Baghdad into this Axis will seal the humiliating defeat of plans for a US-Israel-Saudi dominated ‘New Middle East’. This regional unity comes at a terrible cost, but it is coming, nonetheless.

References

(1) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’, Global Research, 5 June, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/daraa-2011-syrias-islamist-insurrection-in-disguise/5460547

(2) The Angry Arab (2015) ‘This is what the candidate for Syria’s provisional (opposition) government wrote on Facebook: a holocaust’, 4 August, online: http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2015/08/this-is-what-candidate-for-syrias.html

(3) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Chemical Fabrications: East Ghouta and Syria’s Missing Children’, Global Research, 12 April, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemical-fabrications-east-ghouta-and-syrias-missing-children/5442334

(4) Nir Rosen (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

(5) Press TV (2015) ‘Syria ‘should not interfere’ in militant ops by US-backed groups’, 3 August, online: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/08/03/423141/us-syria-isis-isil-assad-josh-earnest

(6) Adam Taylor (2014) ‘Behind Biden’s gaffe lie real concerns about allies’ role in rise of the Islamic State’, Washington Post, 6 October, online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/06/behind-bidens-gaffe-some-legitimate-concerns-about-americas-middle-east-allies/

(7) Bloomberg (2015) ‘U.A.E. to Prosecute 41 Accused of Trying to Establish Caliphate’, 2 August, online:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/u-a-e-to-prosecute-41-accused-of-trying-to-establish-caliphate

(8) Reuters (2015) Egypt defends Syria’s territorial unity after Turkey moves against IS’, 2 July, online: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/29/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-egypt-idUKKCN0Q31AY20150729

(9) Zeina Karam and Adam Schreck (2015) ‘Iran nuclear deal opens diplomatic channels for Syria’, AP, 6 August, online:http://news.yahoo.com/iran-nuclear-deal-opens-diplomatic-channels-syria-161740195.html

Source: Press TV
The Syrian armed forces backed by fighters of Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah have gained more ground on the battlefield against Takfiri militants in the strategic border city of Zabadani.

According to Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV, the Syrian army and allied Hezbollah resistance fighters managed to take control of Barada Mosque and the neighboring buildings in southwestern part of Zabadani on Thursday.

The report added that the forces also made more advances toward the western neighborhood of the city, killing and injuring scores of terrorists.

Takfiri elements have reportedly dug several underground tunnels in Zabadani and use them in battle against Syrian army and Hezbollah fighters.

The Syrian military is said to have destroyed four of the tunnels, through which ISIL terrorist imported arms to the town.

The advance in the flash-point city came amid reports that some militant groups have decided to surrender due to the tightening siege on their positions. The allied forces have already established full control over major entrances of Zabadani as well as key plains south of the city.

A highly strategic town in Syria’s Rif Dimashq Province, Zabadani has been a major stronghold of the militant groups like al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham. Control over the city had enabled the terrorists to move along the Syrian-Lebanese border and transfer ammunition and forces into areas not far from the Syrian capital Damascus.

Since March 2001, Syria has been grappling with a militancy sponsored by foreign governments including Turkey, the United States and some regional Arab allies. The crisis has left more than 230,000 people dead.

The violence has also forced over 3.8 million Syrians to take refuge in neighboring countries, including Jordan and Lebanon.

By Sayed Hasan
Translated from French by Jenny Bright
Source: Information Clearing House

The Saudi-American war against Yemen, led by a coalition of the richest Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc. along with their servants like Egypt and Morocco) against the poorest Arab country, enters its fourth month. According to the United Nations, it has killed ​​more than 3,100 and wounded 15,000, displaced 1 million and created 245,000 refugees, and created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis which the United Nations has declared to be on the level of maximum humanitarian alert. Ruthless and indiscriminate strikes target all civilian infrastructure, up to residential areas, markets, granaries, water tanks, hospitals, schools, mosques, and even archaeological remains and tombs – which recalls that the destructive ideology of the Islamic State takes its roots in Saudi Arabia – without sparing civilian convoys fleeing violence. A merciless siege has been imposed in Yemen, a country which imports 90% of its food, and Relief Organizations are prevented from delivering supplies to the country, and even see their workers targeted while providing humanitarian assistance. More than 21 million people (80% of Yemen’s population) are without adequate access to staples and essential services such as food, clean water, medical care, electricity and fuel. Already, it appears that Saudi Arabia has used unconventional weapons (cluster munitions, and perhaps even chemical weapons) and has committed war crimes and perhaps even crimes against humanity.

However, this war remains largely ignored by the mainstream media, both in the West and in the Arab-Muslim world (with the exception of Iran and the media close to Hezbollah in Lebanon). The US sponsors this illegal and criminal military intervention that they provide full support for, putting all their resources at the service of the Gulf monarchies who have acquired the most modern weapons to the tune of $115 billion for the single year 2014: they can therefore destabilise the region without sending their armed forces, conforming to the Obama no-boots-on-the-ground doctrine that favours proxy wars. It is the same for the other NATO member countries – United Kingdom, France, etc., which is not surprising coming from the supporters and apologists of terrorism in Syria. Regarding Riyadh, Wikileaks has recently unveiled the procedure of Saudi censorship of the entire Arab world, between corruption and intimidation. All these actors provide direct support to Al Qaeda and to the Islamic state, which has appeared on the Yemeni scene and is now on the border of Saudi Arabia, their long-time goal. The Saudi blindness seems to know no bounds.

The Saudi assault was not to repel an alleged advance of Iran and/or Shiism, but to break the attempts towards independence of this country that historically has been a vassal of Riyadh. So far, this war has not realised any of its stated objectives. On the contrary, the Yemeni resistance has taken hold of most major Yemen cities, and it takes more and more initiative by carrying the war into the territory of Saudi Arabia, bombing its border towns and attacking its military bases and convoys, and causing dozens of casualties among the Saudi forces – of which the extent of the losses is inviolable military secret. Moreover, the attacks resulted in uniting the country – the regular armed forces of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Houthi rebels and other popular committees – behind the slogan “Death to the House of Saud”, an unprecedented development in the Middle East, and revealed both the barbarism of the Wahhabi regime and its vulnerability and powerlessness on the purely military field. Held in check despite the benefit of the steady stream of Western weaponry, Riyadh already sees its influence wane in the Middle East.

In a message to the combatants dated 1^st July 2015 – that evokes those of Hassan Nasrallah to Hezbollah fighters during the 2006 war –, Abd-al-Malik al-Houthi, head of the Yemeni resistance, denounced the collusion of the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyad Axis, denouncing the war and the siege imposed in Yemen as even more barbaric than the Israeli crimes in Gaza. He agrees with the analysis of the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, who recalled that even the Zionists did not have a systematic policy of targeting hospitals, tombs and archaeological remains. Abd-al-Malik al-Houthi brandished nothing less than the slogan of the holy war against the cradle of Islam, equated to the “devil’s horn”, which is, according to a famous prophetic tradition, an evil heresy called to arise in the Najd region – where Wahhabism emerged. Again, this is an unprecedented development: Saudi Arabia, which, since March 2015, broke with its policy of underground action and now acts without cover, has never been so violently shaken.

Riyadh is now in an impasse: its air campaign is a bitter failure, as was predictable given the six previous offensives since 2004 by the forces of President Saleh (yesterday supported by Saudi Arabia and now allied with the Houthi rebels), which all ended up in a failure, as well as the Israeli experiences in Lebanon and Gaza, which constitutes the perfect model of the Saudi aggression. As for the option of a ground operation, all data indicates that it would be absolutely disastrous and would end with a rout of Saudi forces. But there is no question for the House of Saud, blinded beyond any possible return, of accepting a cease-fire that would be a victory for Yemen; rather it must continue this fanatic war of terror at all costs, by torpedoing all attempts of agreement or truce, at the risk of rushing towards the abyss. As for the forces of the Yemeni resistance, they are far from having exhausted all their possibilities, and multiply the incursions into enemy territory. They could even question its territorial integrity by claiming Yemeni provinces formerly annexed by Saudi Arabia. And as a last resort, they could close the strategic Strait of Bab al-Mandeb – which they are quite capable of –, one of the largest global maritime passages, especially for hydrocarbons, which would have severe global repercussions. If, like Syria, Iraq and Libya, Yemen is threatened with disintegration, Saudi Arabia itself is now on the way to becoming destabilised, and even dismantling.

Will the Saudi crusade push into the Axis of Resistance a new country, Yemen – about which Hassan Nasrallah declared that the awakening and resistant spirit of its people were such that he could without hesitation send 100,000 or 200,000 men to fight Israel? Whatever the case may be, already the Ansarallah movement has reached the extent of a new Hezbollah, and the Saudi war is doomed to failure. It announces with certainty the inevitable fall of the House of Saud, whose Wahhabi ideology and foreign policy have been the cancer of Islam and of the Arab world for decades, and ultimately, the end of the US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. More than one of the region’s peoples will rejoice.

Source: ShiiteNews

Hujjat-ul-Islam Seyyed Hashim Safi el Din, head of Hezbollah’s political council, attending the ceremony for Lebanese martyrs demanded authorities and media activists to protect the resistance and sovereignty of the country.

He criticized the claimants of supporting Lebanon, backing Takfiri groups in reality, and said,” Any view which questions Hezbollah efforts, is in fact a support for Takfiri terrorist groups.”

“Resistance recognizes the Zionist regime of Israel as its number one enemy and does not count Takfiri terrorists to be apart from the Zionist regime and the US.” Hezbollah official noted vowing for full resistance of Hezbollah against these groups in a bid to change all political equations to its own benefit.

Lebanese scholar praised national determination of the people to stand against Takfiri groups and added,” Lebanese nation, who spare no effort in standing against measures and activities of the Zionist regime, will not let Takfiri members, puppets of the Zionist regime, to find the grounds for their crimes in Lebanon.”

By Reme Sakr
Source: Global Research
The situation in Syria’s south seems to have turned for the worst in recent weeks, and at the heart of the south is Sweida Mountain (Jabal al-Arab or Jabal al-Druze), home to most of the region’s Druze people.

After Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda in Syria) seized the 52nd Brigade base in Daraa, their attention was turned to the Thaaleh military base in Sweida’s west where, for the past few days, local villagers along with the National Defence Forces and the Syrian Arab Army, have been deep in battle against the AlQaeda group who if successful in overrunning the base, would expose Sweida entirely from the West.

Closer to the city, at least two people were killed this week when mortars landed on their houses. This was the first such casualties in Sweida. The attack was an attempt by sleeper cells inside the province to create a distraction for security forces. Local news sites later reported that the perpetrators were found. Their launching positions in the Maqwas area on the eastern outskirts were discovered the very same day.

Being under a semi siege, the Druze mountain is facing its biggest threat since the beginning of the war. According to local sources on the ground and social media sites reporting on updates from Sweida, a meeting has taken place between the General Secretary of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, and the Lebanese MP Talal Arslan. In coordination with the Syrian government a decision was made to send weapons and reinforcements from Lebanon to Jabal al-Arab to support Sweida’s defence.

Although no other media outlets have reported on this, if it is true, Hezoballah getting involved in the defence of Sweida is a highly significant move. It would be a direct message to the Zionists over the border.

According to Reuters this week, the Israeli President expressed his concern to US President Barrack Obama over the fate of Syria’s Druze, in the face of the Islamist threat creeping onto the Druze homeland. What Rivlin was setting the mood for was a pretext for Israeli intervention in the Syrian south to supposedly protect the Druze from the same Jabhat al Nusra militants that his government is helping.

President Rivlin’s gesture was firmly rejected by Sweida’s leaders, who accused Israel of playing its usual dirty politics to serve its own interests in the region. Sheikh Yousef Jarboue of Sweida in an interview with the Lebanese ‘Al Mayadeen’ responded by saying that if Israel cared about the Druze, then they should stop using the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to provide medical treatment to the Al Qaeda takfiri (sectarian terrorist) groups, who are not only a threat to the Druze but to all Syrian people.

Rivlin’s statement was merely an attempt to depict a lack of confidence in the Syrian army and to falsely present Syria’s Druze as allies of the Zionist state who are open to foreign intervention. Sheikh Jarboue reiterated that Sweida’s safety lies with the Syrian government, and as a province of a united Syrian Arab Republic.

Israel has tried to subdue the Druze in the occupied Golan Heights by repeated attempts to force Israeli citizenship upon them. Just this year Israeli security forces arrested 48 year old Sedki al-Maket, a Druze from the occupied Golan, for filming a meeting between Israeli officials and Al Qaeda militants near the Syrian border.

Israel has every reason to portray the Syrian war as a sectarian conflict and to sell the idea of partitioning Syria. Having a Druze State, a Sunni state, and an Alawite state would then give a Jewish state the legitimacy that it so desperately needs.

This is just how the Yazidis in Iraq, who have now disappeared from international headlines, were used as the pretext for the launch of the US-led coalition’s useless bombing campaign against ISIS. Israel would like to paint the Druze as helpless victims, in need of saving.

However, the situation on the ground tells otherwise. The Druze are organising. Close coordination between the Syrian army and local defence groups indicate that the Syrian government still occupies a strong support base in the Druze south. The prospect of Sweida falling into the hands of AlQaeda, like Palmyra and Idlib before, seems very slim for a number of reasons.

Firstly, as well as the Sweida National Defence Forces and Jeish al Muwahideen who have been active since the beginning of the war, a new battalion containing 33 different factions was launched last month. ‘Dere’a al Watan’ or ‘The homeland Shield’, under the leadership of the retired army General Nayef al-Aaqel is believed to have mobilised and armed at least 100 thousand civilians of Sweida’s men and women.

Secondly, there is absolutely no support base for the terrorists in Sweida. The Druze are considered heretics by radical Islam and the recent Jabhat al Nusra killings of Druze villagers at Qalb Lawzeh (Idlib province) were further proof of the impossibility of them surviving under an extremist Sunni rule. While terrorist groups in other parts of Syria may have found support from a small minority of AlQaeda sympathisers in those areas, they can be sure that no jihadis will be welcomed in Jabal al-Druze.

Thirdly, no towns or villages were evacuated in Sweida. Leaders have stated that the locals themselves alongside the Syrian Army will form the frontlines of defence against Al Qaeda’s Jabhat al Nusra from the west and ISIS from the east.

Sheikh Hussein Jarboue confirmed that there will be no concessions or negotiations made with the militants attacking the Druze homeland. This is contrary to the stance of Lebanese Druze politician Walid Joumblatt, who called for the Syrians to desert their army and agree to a settlement with Jabhat al-Nusra.

Anyone following the conflict must understand that the events currently unfolding in Sweida are not a threat to the Druze only, but a threat to the whole of Syria. While the threat against the Druze is serious and real, all of Syria’s communities are facing extinction from the Western-sponsored takfiri groups.

Just like the attacks on Maaloula, Kassab, and Kobani before, an attack on Sweida threatens Syria’s unity and distinct pluralist fabric. While there is a constant effort to report the Syrian war in sectarian terms, the truth is that the extremist takfiri groups are a threat not just to minorities or even just Syria, but to the whole region.

by ERIC DRAITSER
Source: CounterPunch
Last week, millions around the world marked the 67th anniversary of the Nakba – literally “the disaster” or “the catastrophe” in Arabic – commemorating the seizure of Palestinian land and transformation of historic Palestine into modern Israel. Naturally, there is little ambiguity among pro-Palestine activists that the Nakba represents the opening salvo in the ongoing war perpetrated by Israel and Zionism against the people of Palestine; it is the continuing war of gradual (and not so gradual) erasure of Palestinian culture, Palestinian ethnic identity, and Palestinian collective memory. The weapons in this war range from Israeli bombs, to Zionist propaganda that seeks to dehumanize the Palestinian people, robbing them of both their agency and their humanity, their land and their livelihoods.

But these facts are only controversial when facing the barrage of pro-Israeli propaganda either in the media, or as parroted by liberal Zionists whose humanity and compassion somehow does not extend to a tiny strip of land called Gaza, or the disjointed and disfigured territory known as the West Bank. Indeed, most people of conscience have come to see the self-evident injustice of the Nakba and the occupation; they recognize the apartheid and continuing oppression of the Palestinian people, correctly believing this struggle to be one of the great injustices of the contemporary world.

However, there is another Nakba, another catastrophe, that is ongoing today that even many pro-Palestinian voices fail (or choose not) to see – the war on Syria, Iraq, and indeed much of the region. For while 1948 saw the destruction of whole villages, extermination of families, displacement of millions, and the stealing of land throughout Palestine, so too have the last few years seen a similar phenomenon in Syria and Iraq. But while the rape of Palestine is a cause around which millions all over the world can unite, the war on Syria and Iraq has left much of the international movement divided. Many even today refuse to see this continuing war as even a war at all; it is “sectarian conflict,” it is “merely a proxy war,” and many argue that “all sides should be condemned.” But is this really true? Or, are these merely the empty platitudes of intellectual and moral cowards who prefer to stick with just Palestine because Syria and Iraq are “not their issue”?

Hezbollah, Syria, and Historical Memory

While there are many proverbial ostriches with their heads in the sand, there are forces in the region who have taken a stand with their brothers and sisters in Syria, chief among them Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah organization. Hezbollah has been fighting side by side with the Syrian Arab Army on the ground in Syria since at least early 2013, and has won strategically significant military victories countless times in the intervening months. Perhaps even more striking however is the intellectual fervor with which Nasrallah and Hezbollah have defended the very concept of resistance to Saudi/Qatari-sponsored wahhabi (takfiri) extremism espoused by the Al Qaeda-affiliated al Nusra Front, ISIS, and the myriad other foreign-sponsored terror organizations waging war on Syria and Iraq.

In a widely disseminated speech given by Nasrallah marking both the 67th anniversary of the Nakba and the significant victory by allied Hezbollah and Syrian military forces in the mountains of Qalamoun on the Syria-Lebanon border, Nasrallah noted that:

While we mark the Nakba of the Palestinian people, we are also dealing with a new Nakba and that is the scheme by ISIS and its supporters who are trying to divide the Ummah [nation]…we have to study the causes of [the] Nakba and identify the responsibilities in order for the contemporary generations to learn from the past experience, which included the noble stances of the mujahidin and the martyrs and comprised those who betrayed their Ummah [nation] for the sake of private interests.

Nasrallah, always a powerful and charismatic speaker, here strikes a powerful note in drawing a direct parallel between the Nakba of 67 years ago, and that of today. Not only does his statement imply the similarity of many of the outcomes – displacement of millions, ethnic cleansing, mass killings – it also makes a qualitative comparison between the two, noting both tacitly, and at times overtly, that the Western-backed, Gulf-sponsored war on Syria, Iraq, and the whole region is connected to a powerful, international imperial project designed to remake the region in the interests of colonial powers.

And of course, on a human level, does one really doubt that the Zionist terrorist groups-cum-death squads such as Irgun (led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky) and Lehi (led by Avraham Stern) which massacred men, women and children and drove Palestinians from their ancestral lands were substantively different from the ISIS and Nusra death squads of today which perpetrate similar crimes against Christians, Alawites, Sunnis, and Shia Muslims throughout Syria and Iraq? Certainly the victims of either group would argue that such crimes cannot be seen as anything other than comparable. And so, seen in this way, Nasrallah’s relativism in regards to the Nakba of 1948 and that of today is clearly and undeniably apt.

Nasrallah’s claim that this new war is “trying to divide the Ummah” is critical to understanding both the importance of Hezbollah’s involvement in it, and the significance of the war for the Arab world, particularly in the Syrian theater. Not only does he articulate the fundamental understanding that the sectarian nature of the conflict is not some logical outgrowth, but rather is an integral part of its character and the agenda of those that support it, but he also makes plain both the practical and symbolic importance of Syria to the broader anti-imperialist, anti-colonial project.

For decades, Syria has stood as a model of a multicultural, multiethnic, multi-religious secular nation in a region full of chauvinist, ethnic supremacist regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Israel, and elsewhere. It is a country where sectarian divides, though very real, were almost never problematic, and where national solidarity, patriotism and allegiance to the nation stood above any religious sectarian differences. Syria represented a triumph of what once was called Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, despite the fact that many self-proclaimed socialists today are quick to denigrate its accomplishments in that regard. Syria stands for progress in many ways: respect for the rights of women and minorities, equality under the law, and religious tolerance. Chief among its tremendous accomplishments has been the continued defense of, and legal protections for, Palestinian victims of the Nakba and their descendants.

In this way, Hezbollah and the Syrian government are natural allies. Both have stood defiant against Israel while many of their fellow Arab states (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.) have sought accommodation with Tel Aviv for material benefit. Both Hezbollah and Syria have refused to abandon the Palestinian cause, with the former having taken on and defeated Israel on the battlefield, and the latter providing political, economic, and diplomatic support to Palestine and Palestinians, both within and without its borders.

From this perspective, it is essential to see the current war against US-NATO-GCC-Turkey-Israel sponsored terrorists as both a new Nakba, and a continuation of a decades-long struggle. As Nasrallah correctly pointed out, “We faced a Nakba then, we face a new and more dangerous one now.”

The Politics of Nakbas, New and Old

The inescapable connections between what could be called the historical and contemporary Nakbas are myriad. From the way in which each served the political agenda of the Western imperial establishment, to the impact that each has had on the map and political, social, and cultural character of the region, both events have served to fundamentally transform the Middle East, and the entire Arab world. However, in examining these far reaching impacts, one cannot help but be struck by the politics manifested today by all the interested parties. Indeed, it is the politics of today’s Nakba that, in many ways, complicates any understanding of both the importance of the historical Nakba, and that of the Nakba of today.

An examination of the key players in 1948 reveals that, much to the chagrin of those ostensible allies of the Palestinians and of oppressed peoples, the players are by and large the same, thereby giving credence to Nasrallah’s “Two Nakbas” construction. For in 1948, in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II, it was the United States, France, and Britain who created the State of Israel out of the sands and hills of Palestine, thereby leading to one of recent history’s deepest, and still bleeding, wounds. These same imperial powers have been the main instigators of the contemporary Nakba, providing weapons, training, financial and diplomatic support to terrorist groups in the war on Syria which, along with the criminal US war in Iraq, lead directly to the creation and expansion of ISIS. In this way, the ultimate responsibility for both Nakbas rests at the feet of Washington, London, and Paris (to say nothing of Riyadh, Doha, Ankara, and Tel Aviv).

Perhaps, in this light, one can begin to see that the Nakba narrative is, in effect, a colonial narrative, and that the war raging in Syria and Iraq today is merely a new chapter in the history of Western colonialism – or neo-colonialism, as it were – in the Arab world. With its lucrative energy reserves, strategic location, and historical and politico-religious significance, the Middle East remains one of the shining jewels of the imperial crown.

And yet, despite all these connections, despite the obvious and painfully self-evident continuity of these struggles, many pro-Palestinian elements still choose to see the historical Nakba in a vacuum, opting instead to side with the oppressors and colonial lackeys in the conflict today.

Hamas, despite its reputation (fair or unfair) as a resistance force and bastion of anti-imperialism, has repeatedly sided with the Muslim Brotherhood and its patron Qatar, as well as Saudi Arabia – Hamas having shifted their allegiance away from Syria, Hezbollah and Iran, and toward the US proxy monarchies of the Gulf. As Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh stated in 2012, “I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.”

Indeed, despite the support for Palestinian liberation provided by Damascus, Hamas opportunistically allied with the satraps of Western imperialism believing, with some justification at the time, that the tide had turned against Assad and Syria, and that they would benefit most from being on the winning end of the war. But of course, that is not what happened, and the steadfastness of Syrian resistance to the international war against them has led many in the Palestinian political establishment to question that decision of a few years ago.

While it may be understandable, Hamas’s betrayal of their Syrian and Hezbollah brothers has not gone unnoticed. As Syrian President Assad defiantly explained in 2013, “This was not the first time they had betrayed us. It happened before in 2007 and 2009. Their history is one of treachery and betrayal… [I wish] someone would persuade them to return to being a resistance movement [but it’s doubtful]…Hamas has sided against Syria from day one. They have made their choice.” Although Iran has recently attempted to restore relations with Hamas for their political interests, it seems that what relationship there may have been between Hamas and Damascus and Tehran is a thing of the past.

And this is precisely the problem. Hamas’s failure to overcome the sectarian allegiances and political opportunism of their ostensible Muslim Brotherhood and Qatari friends has left them, in many ways, politically isolated. For while Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara shed crocodile tears over the plight of the Palestinian people, these are the same countries falling over themselves to do business with Israel and serve the Western imperial system in whatever way they can. Seen from this perspective, the victims of the historical Nakba have, through political miscalculation and betrayal by their political elites, estranged themselves from the victims of the contemporary Nakba. Moreover, they have burned the bridge that linked them with the forces of resistance in the region.

Of course, no analysis of this issue would be complete without an obligatory public denunciation of the “pro-Palestinian” groups that have done yeoman’s service for the Empire in its war on Syria and Iraq. From NGOs and centers of online and grassroots activism, to the allegedly anti-imperialist media outlets, the international campaign against Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq and Iran has been seemingly a force of nature. While no one should be surprised that Al Jazeera, a news outlet bankrolled by the Qatari royal family, would be the leading edge of anti-Syria propaganda, some might be surprised to find that other pseudo-alternative outlets have joined in the imperialist disinformation campaign. These same outlets that claim to stand for truth and justice in Palestine eagerly cheerlead the war on Syria. Such duplicity serves to illustrate the political crisis that has befallen the Resistance movement and those who support Palestinian liberation.

To see the Palestinian victims of the Nakba and its ongoing effects in a political vacuum is to do a disservice to the spirit of the Resistance. To allow the imperialists to divide the movement along sectarian lines – make no mistake, this is true for many who support Palestine but call for Syria’s destruction – is to provide aid and comfort to the enemy. To separate the two Nakbas and deem one legitimate while the other illegitimate is to expose oneself as the greatest of hypocrites.

Naturally, such conclusions will not be met with applause by many. This writer, like others who have made similar comments, will likely receive angry emails and abusive tweets. But this is a small price to pay for speaking the truth when many others seem afraid or unwilling to do so. It is an infinitesimally small price to pay when one considers the countless sons and daughters of Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon who have spilled their blood to save their families, their homes, their people.

This writer believes it essential to place Palestine in the broadest regional and historical context, and to proclaim loudly that there can be no liberation of Palestine without a regional and international alliance and realignment, so that the divide is no longer sectarian but ideological. Either the Palestinian leadership is allied with the forces of anti-colonial, anti-imperialist struggle, or they are in league with the forces of reaction and subservience to Empire. In this existential struggle, there can be no middle ground. There can be no separation between the historical and contemporary Nakbas. In this tale of two Nakbas, there is only one acceptable outcome: victory, justice, liberation.

Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of Counterpunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.